Chapter 16
16
Giselle
“W hat were you fighting about in your office?” I asked Carlo. My fingers leisurely ran through his chest hair. “What happens in that office has nothing to do with you.” Carlo kissed the top of my head and pulled me closer to his body.
That wasn’t the answer I wanted. Any time I asked him a question about—pretty much anything—he always gave me some kind of vague answer. At first, I felt like he was just trying not to overwhelm me with too much.
I hadn’t exactly been the easiest person to get along with when I left the hospital.
I knew that.
I was angry.
At the world.
At my situation.
At everyone.
But now, I’d been more stable than I had in ages. And my therapist said I should start being upfront and telling Carlo exactly what I needed. Or what I didn’t.
And what I didn’t need was to be sheltered anymore.
What I needed was the truth.
I moved a bit and set my chin on my hand. “I want to know what was going on. I’m assuming it had something to do with Sergio.”
Carlo touched my hair and looked at it fall through his fingers. “There’s nothing to worry about. Close your eyes. Marcello will be up soon.”
I felt that annoyance grow, and frustration ran through my body.
“I know he will. Just like I knew he would two hours ago when we first started fooling around. I’m not stupid, Carlo. And you don’t need to treat me like glass. I’m not going to break. Now tell me what you guys were fighting about. I deserve to know what’s going on.” And I totally freaking did. I had a feeling that whatever went on in Carlo’s office had to do with Sergio.
Which had to do with me.
And from the way those men were screaming at each other—it didn’t sound good.
“If you need to know something, I’ll tell you.”
That was it.
I had officially arrived in pissed off land. I sat up and glared down at him. “No, if I ask you what’s going on, then you need to tell me.”
Carlo’s face shuttered closed. “No,” was all he said.
And that pissed me off even more.
“What do you mean, no?”
He cleared his throat and spoke a bit louder, “No. That is not how this works. Not everything that goes on in that fuckin’ office is for your ears. And if I think it is—” he tried to pull me back down, but I resisted, “then I’ll tell you.”
My anger swirled around in my head, and I felt like it was about to explode. “That’s not fair.”
Carlo sat up, and I felt his whole demeanor change. And it wasn’t for the better. “Giselle, I’m fuckin’ tired. I don’t want to fight with you about shit you know nothing about. I just spent the better part of two hours making love to you in every way I could think of. Made you come three times. And I came twice. Now, I’m fuckin’ tired and I want to get some sleep before the baby wakes up in an hour.”
It was too late. The adrenaline was racing through my body. Even if I wanted to back off and lay back down with him, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I was way too mad.
“Why can’t you level with me? All I want to know is what’s going on. And why you and Stefan were fighting. He wouldn’t show up unannounced for nothing. It had something to do with Sergio, right?”
The lines between his eyebrows grew deeper. “Did you not hear a fuckin’ word I just said?” he asked with more than a little sarcasm in his voice.
As far as I was concerned, he could stuff that sarcasm right back down his throat. Or I’d do it for him.
I scurried out of bed and put my robe on.
“Get your ass back in bed. Right now,” he ordered, but I was so far from caring it wasn’t even funny.
“Bite me, Carlo.” I ignored him and tied my robe. I turned around to walk to the bedroom door.
“I said get your ass back into bed with me, Giselle. Do not take one more step.” His voice was clipped, and his tone was serious.
Dead serious.
My head twisted back to him. “Fuck you, Carlo,” I said. And I meant it. I didn’t need to take this shit from him.
Not anymore.
I’d been more than careful to not mention anything about Sergio for all this time. I figured if something had happened, Carlo would tell me.
And I also didn’t want to put any more pressure on him than he probably already felt. Me getting kidnapped on his own property wasn’t something Carlo would be happy about. I knew that.
He thought Dani and I would be safe under his roof.
And we weren’t.
And me being gone for all those months—I shook my head. I did not want this dark shit to settle into my brain.
And I sure didn’t want to think about any of this stuff at night. When the darkness could so easily take over and seep into every open crack and crevice.
Marcello’s cries filled the air.
“Damn it to Hell,” Carlo swore as he jumped out of bed.
“I’ll get him,” I said, feeling like I wanted to club Carlo over the head with something very large and very heavy. He’d woken up the baby with all this nonsense.
“No, I’ll get him and change him.” Carlo was being short with me.
And that did absolutely nothing for my mood.
A knock at the door made me frown and turn my head. Who the heck was at the door?
I didn’t have to wait long. Eve peeked inside. “Can I take him for a while? It sounds like you two have—uh, things to work out.”
What she meant was—our fighting had woken her up.
I sighed. A flush of embarrassment crept over me. “I have to feed him. But thank you.”
Eve gave me a flat smile. “Look, I can make him a bottle downstairs. I know where your breastmilk is. And then I’ll keep him in our room for the night. Or until you come to get him.”
I looked back to see Carlo changing a very angry Marcello on the bed.
I had to pump a few times a day to relieve the pain I sometimes felt. I kept enough for a bottle or two in the fridge and froze the rest.
I trusted Eve with the baby. She had three of her own that she was raising. And she’d looked after Dani many times over the years.
Maybe Eve was right.
Maybe Carlo and I did need to have it out. And doing it around a baby was not fair to him at all.
It was pretty immature, actually.
“Are you sure?” I asked my best friend, giving her one last chance to back out.
She smiled bigger now and stepped into the room. “Of course, I am. You don’t have to ask.” She hustled to the bed. Carlo had finished changing him.
“Come with Auntie Evie.” She picked Marcello up, and he protested as she hugged him. “Shh, let’s go find a bottle. You can help me. And then we’ll watch some reruns together, okay?”
I gave my friend a sad, but grateful smile.
Once she shut the door behind them, I was suddenly airborne. “What the—” I said, up in the air. In Carlo’s arms.
He turned around and headed to the bed. One knee digging into the mattress, he dropped me on top. “What are you doing?” I asked, completely exasperated with this man.
“We’re going to sleep. That’s what we’re doing. I’m tired. So are you. And we have a babysitter for the rest of the night.”
I tried to push myself up, but Carlo’s body didn’t allow that. I shoved his shoulders. “I don’t want to be in this bed with you right now.”
Carlo glared down at me, looking all kinds of angry. “I don’t care. You’re going to sleep here. With me. And that’s final.”
My eyes narrowed, and I was about three seconds from yelling at the top of my lungs at him. “Move. I want to get up.”
He shook his head. “No.”
I pushed his chest, but I’d have better luck trying to move a mountain. “I said move!” I raised my voice as I shouted at his face.
He still wouldn’t budge. Not one inch.
“Are you going to hold my hands above my head? Sergio likes it that way. Is that what you want?” I barked out at him in a venomous shout.
The expression was something I’d never seen on Carlo’s face before.
What was it?
Anger.
Hostility.
Disgust?
I wasn’t sure. And I also wasn’t sure I necessarily wanted to know.
“I have never forced myself on you, Giselle,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you ever accuse me of being like—that asshole. I’m not him.”
I let out a frustrated laugh. “Well, you’re acting a lot like him right now. Let me up, Carlo. I’m not kidding. I don’t want to be in here with you.”
With a resigned sigh, he rolled off me.
I scooted off the bed and spun around, arms crossed. “If you want to talk, I’ll stay. Standing. And I’ll listen. But if you just want to be a jerk and ignore my needs. Then I’ll leave.”
He sat up and moved off the bed. “We knew where Sergio was. And now we don’t. Okay? That’s it. None of that matters. You and Dani are under all kinds of protection. Most you don’t even know about. Nothing and no one can touch you here. I promise.”
I heard him continue talking, but I’d long since tuned out.
They knew where Sergio was.
And now they didn’t.
A gross, tingling fear crawled over my skin, and I had the immediate desire to jump right out of my skin.
And scream.
My head grew dizzy.
I couldn’t think.
Before I fell over, I somehow shuffled over to the bed and sat down. My world felt unbelievably small.
And my life seemed to hang by a freaking thread.
Again.
Or more like—still. I hadn’t been out of harm’s way for years now.
Actually—maybe never. It wasn’t like I had a fantastic upbringing. Any number of horrible things or people could have gotten me.
Before Sergio did.
And that was the really crappy part.
If my dad hadn’t given me to that—bastard, I might have had a fighting chance.
I would have never met Sergio. And I would never have been introduced into his horrible world.
I shut my eyes and rubbed my face. But then I wouldn’t have Dani.
Or Carlo.
In an odd chance of circumstance, I’d met the man of my dreams because of all the crap I’d been through. And there really was no way I would have ended up meeting Carlo Sovrano out in the wild.
And then, we wouldn’t have made Marcello.
I shook my head.
I had to stop myself from going much further down this awful, dark rabbit hole. All it led to was heartbreak and conflict.
I couldn’t change the past. What was done—was done. And we all had to deal with the consequences.
“Stop.” Carlo sat beside me and put his big, protective arm around me. “This is not anything you have to worry about. I have men on it. We’ll find that asshole. And when we do, I’ll rip him to shreds with my own bare hands.” The conviction and promise in his voice made me shiver. Yes, I wanted Sergio ripped to shreds. But no, I didn’t want Carlo within a billion miles of Sergio.
The thought of that made me sick.
“You can’t promise that,” I said in barely a whisper. I let my hands drop to my lap. “He always wins. You don’t know him like I do.” And thank goodness he didn’t. I wanted it to stay that way.
“You should have just stayed with Stassia and let me, and Dani go.” I stared straight ahead at the bedroom door. “She could have given you all the sons you wanted. And she comes with the added benefit of not having a crazy mafia creep stalking her.”
My body jerked to the side. Carlo turned me to him. His hands were on my arms, and he was holding them tightly. “Don’t you ever fucking say that again.” The rage in his eyes actually scared the crap out of me. My heart beat so fast I could hardly breathe. “I want you. I always wanted you. The only reason I ever brought her here was because you didn’t want me anymore.” And even though I was afraid of him at this moment, I still heard the hurt in his voice. Hurt that I’d caused.
“But if you’d let me go, I would have stayed ahead of Sergio. I could have kept my daughter safe. And you safe. And now—” my eyes filled up with unshed tears, “Sergio is after you, too. That’s all my fault.”
Carlo closed his eyes and shook his head. When he opened his eyes, he gazed at me. “I want you, Giselle. I’ve always wanted you. Right from the start. I called for a hired lay in that hotel room. And when you showed up—” his head shook slowly from side to side, “my world tilted. And I still don’t know which fuckin’ way is up because of you.”
Tears fell down my cheeks, and Carlo let go of my arms to wipe under my eyes with his thumbs.
“You should have let me go.”
He leaned over and rested his forehead against mine. “If I’d done that, we wouldn’t have Marcello,” he whispered. I felt his warm breath float across my face. “I never stopped looking for you, Giselle. And then when I found you—I almost lost you again. Do you know how afraid I was? You gave me a son—” his voice grew tight, “and then you almost died.”
My hands lifted to the side of his face. “You should have let me go then, too. Taken Marcello. And left me.”
My heart.
Oh, my gosh. My heart.
It hurt so, so, so much to say that to Carlo.
His mouth opened, and he stared at me for a long moment—not saying anything at all. And then he finally spoke. “Left you? Fucking left you to die?” he rasped out as his face and his voice tightened. “Do you know what I did when your heart stopped beating, Giselle? As the life was hemorrhaging out of you?” His eyes darted around my face. “I set our son down and got up on the bed with you. And I pumped your fucking heart for you. It felt like forever until the ambulance came. And even then, they had to drag me off of you.” His glassy eyes nearly stared a hole right through me.
“And now you’re telling me I should have left you?” He shook his head. “I was your heart, Giselle. For seventeen minutes, I was your fucking heart. I pumped it for you when you couldn’t.” A few tears slipped out of his eyes—and my heart broke all over again. Like never before.
“Does that sound like someone who wanted to give up on you? And—” his voice caught in his throat, “and leave you there to die?”
Now I was crying, too. I didn’t even realize it until my vision blurred.
Carlo had saved my life.
Carlo had been my heart.
“But you wanted to give up on me. Didn’t you, Giselle? Right before you passed out from blood loss, you asked me to give Daniella—my daughter—to Nick and Eve to raise.” His eyes grew so fierce, I held my breath. “My daughter, Giselle. You ordered me to give my daughter to someone else to raise. Do you know how that made me feel? How it still makes me feel?”
Oh.
My.
Heart.
I had done that.
I’d told him to give Dani to Nick and Eve.
“Carlo, I—” I started to say, but he cut me off.
“I love you so fuckin’ much, Giselle. I searched for you. And never gave up. Even when you did. You escaped Sergio’s,” his voice lowered, “and you still didn’t come back to me. You were pregnant with my baby, and you didn’t even call.”
I stopped breathing. This was one of the billion things we’d never discussed.
Why I hadn’t at least tried to call Carlo when I left Sergio’s. That had always stood between us like a large elephant. But he’d never come out and asked it plainly before.
I wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths. And then I told him.
The truth.
“I wanted to keep you safe.”
Carlo interrupted me, “By keeping my son away from me? Were you ever going to tell me I had a child out there in the world? What if I hadn’t found you? Would I have to wait twenty years to find out I had a son?”
Carlo was so angry with me. In his eyes, I saw the hate he held for me. And it stabbed me right in the heart.
I shook my head vehemently. “No, Carlo. No, I was finding a way to get him to you. I wasn’t keeping him from you. I was giving him,” I slapped my hand on my heart, “to you.” I moved my hand to the middle of his chest. His heart beat at a fast pace under my hand. At that moment, I felt a connection with Carlo that I’d never felt before.
Carlo’s hand covered mine. “You were going to give me our son.”
I nodded through my tears. “Yes, Carlo.”
I saw his shoulders relax as he looked down at the floor. I could tell he was thinking hard about what I’d just told him.
When he finally looked up at me, he said, “You weren’t going to keep him. And raise him yourself?”
I closed my eyes and felt more tears run down my cheeks. I opened my eyes and said, “I knew I couldn’t keep two kids safe. Away from Sergio. It was hard enough when Dani was a baby. If it weren’t for Eve and her siblings, I could never have done it by myself. And I knew I couldn’t stay on the run with a toddler and a newborn baby. We’d be too easy to find.”
Suddenly, his hands grasped mine and held on tight. “You would have given up your son? To me?”
I nodded and squeezed his hands right back. “Our son. I knew he was a boy the second I found out I was pregnant.” I smiled through my tears. “And I knew that you’d raise him to be strong. Just like you are. And I knew you could keep him safe.” My voice was nearly a whisper. “If Dani and I weren’t around.”
I could practically see the turmoil spinning around inside his head. And I could feel it, too.After a minute, his hands cupped the sides of my face. “I can’t believe you.” His voice came out like sandpaper. “I cannot believe you.”
Then.
His lips crashed down on mine. Relief flooded my body. My hands touched his hard, muscular chest, and I felt the desire ooze out of him.
For me.
He still wanted me.
“Carlo, I love you. I didn’t leave you. I was only trying to keep you and everyone else safe from us. And I knew Sergio would be watching you. If you had Dani, then he’d kill you. He’d kill you both.”
He panted into my mouth as he answered me, “Shut up, Giselle.” His mouth touched mine, and he kissed me again.
Fiercely.
“I love you. I should have left earlier. So much earlier. I’ve always had to keep ahead of Sergio. It was the only way to keep Dani away from him.” It seemed like once I’d started telling him the truth, I couldn’t stop.
“Shut the fuck up, Giselle,” he muttered against my lips, forcing me to kiss him long and deep.
“I didn’t want to leave. I stayed too long. I put everyone in danger because I was selfish. I wanted to stay. You made leaving too hard.”
He pushed me back on the bed, and his fingers opened my robe. I moaned at the feel of his rough hands all over my body. It felt so incredibly good.
“I love you, Carlo. I love you so much. I didn’t want Sergio to target you. And now that he knows about you—it kills me. This is all my fault. If I’d left sooner, he never would have known I was here.”
He shoved his hands under my armpits and moved me higher on the bed. Then he settled between my legs. “Let’s get two things straight.” He pulled his boxer briefs down just enough, so his huge cock came bobbing out. He laid on top of me and lined his cock right at my heat. “You don’t ever bring up that sonofabitch when we’re in this bed. And secondly, I’ll forever carry the guilt of him kidnapping you and Dani out from under me. And even though it fucking kills me—I can understand why you wouldn’t come back here after you escaped.”
In one single, hard thrust, he entered me, making me groan right out loud.
“And the fact that you would give me our son to raise,” he pulled out and thrust back in sharply, “while you and Dani hid.” His hips bucked against mine, shaking my entire body. “It makes me feel things for you that I’ve never felt before in my life. And it makes me love you even more than I already did.”
My heart warmed, and I swear just with those words, he glued half of my heart back together again.
My arms wrapped around his torso while he fucked me. Hard.
Everything flew out of my head and was replaced with—Carlo.
Carlo fucking my pussy so hard and so right—so, so perfectly.
Carlo kissing me like he loved me with everything he had.
And Carlo touching me—owning me.
Exactly how I loved it.
We’d never had that kind of angry, heart breaking, intense sex before. And it took my love for Carlo to another level that I never dreamed it could go.
But it did.
I loved him.
And he loved me.
Even after living through the spectacular disaster we’d both survived.
It didn’t take long for our bodies to give in and explode. Clinging to one another with everything we had. Never wanting to let go.
And when we finally did, Carlo pulled out and rolled over, taking me with him. Still breathing heavily, he held me and said, “Tell me what happened there. Just this once. Tell me what it was like. Just this one time. And then never again. Do you understand me? I need to know. Or it’ll eat me up inside. We have to move past this. And the only way we can do that is if I know. Everything.”
My defenses were worn down.
And tired.
And sick of hiding so much from the man I loved.
He wanted to know.
No, he needed to know.
And at that moment—I knew I had to tell him.
So.
I did.
For the next hour, I spilled what I’d gone through. And with each second that ticked by, Carlo held me.
Never judging.
Never commenting.
Never admonishing anything that had happened.
And afterward—I felt a billion pounds lighter.
Carlo rewarded me for my admissions by making sweet, soft love to me.
Until I cried.
It was beautiful.
And perfect.
And so, so right.
After we both came—again, Carlo whispered a promise into my ear, “I swear to you, I will kill that fucker with my own two hands.”
Then I fell right to sleep.
In Carlo’s arms.
Warm.
Safe.
And completely loved up.